Between the
latest poster for the annual blood drive
sponsored by
horror movie "Saw IV" and the naughty logo medics at Louis Vuitton's
Paris show, nurses continue to get a sexy shot in the arm.
FYI:
The "Saw"
nurses -- this is the fourth annual blood drive and past posters are
collectibles -- all work at Lionsgate, the studio behind the "Saw"
franchise.
And it goes without saying, that the
vampy lips and crimson nail polish are a
genius touch.
Meanwhile, the nurses
that Marc Jacobs sent down the runway for
Louis Vuitton were also outfitted in retro uniforms,
with a twist.
Models wore a sensual face mask--a dainty black, lace
kerchief that barely
concealed their red pouty lips -- and vintage winged nurse caps.
In
this case, the fetishized homage had more to do with
artist Richard
Prince. Prince (who did his own
nurse series based on pulp fiction book covers in 2003) collaborated
with Jacobs on the Louis Vuitton handbags.
Obviously,
we never get tired of the image of a sexed-up, pulse-quickening
Florence
Nightingale. "W" magazine published a photo of Kate Moss (styled by
Richard Prince) in a white PVC nurses uniform...
"Yes, Nurse, No Nurse"
is a fantasy musical movie born out a European 1960's television
program. It's a current
popular sub-culture piece and has
quite a following in San Francisco, where it was originally launched in
2003 as a stage production. It's loaded with dancing and singing
nurses, recounting the adventures of the residents of Nurse
Klivia’s Rest Home as they combat the efforts of their nasty landlord
and evil neighbor to have them evicted.
Oh, by the way, for all of you 1970's sexy nurse
nostalgia fans, don't forget Ursula Andress as "The Sensuous Nurse" in
the
1979 lusty, ludicrous romp. Andress -- perhaps best
known as Bond gal
Honey Ryder -- wears a short, skimpy uniform that she can't seem to
keep buttoned.
New
World Pictures, a B-movie production company (which often nurtured
talented directors who went on to bigger and better things), had a run
of "nurse sexpots" films in the 1970s. The list includes "The Student
Nurses," (1970), "Private Duty Nurses" (1971), "Night Call Nurses"
(1972), "The Young Nurses" (1973) and "Candy Stripe Nurses" (1974).
Although the films do have "plots," they are usually used as excuses to
show naked women enjoying tête-à-têtes with their
patients.
And even
in the world of music, nurses have songs dedicated to them! Like the
song, "Night Nurse" by Simply Red...
Night Nurse
Tell her try her best just to
make it quick Woman tend to the sick Because there must be
something she can do This heart is broken in two Tell her it's a case of
emergency There's a patient by the name
of Mickey
Night nurse Only you alone can quench
this here thirst My night nurse, Oh God Oh the pain is getting worse
I don't want to see no Doc I need attendance from my
nurse around the clock Because there's no
prescription for me She's the one, the only remedy
My night nurse
Only you alone can quench this here thirst
My night nurse
Oh the pain is getting worse
I'm hurt my love
I don't want to see no Doc
I need attendance from my nurse around the clock
Because there's no prescription for me
She's the one, the only remedy
Night nurse
Only you alone can quench this here thirst
My night nurse
Oh the pain is getting worse
I'm hurt my love
And I'm sure, no ,no doctor got a cure
My night nurse
My night nurse
My night nurse
Ahhh... we couldn't agree more! Where would this world be without our
nurses?
Fashion Emergency PAGING
NURSE BLABLA!
by CAROLINE WEBER, New York Times
Everywhere you look — from Richard Prince’s kitschy ‘‘Nurse’’ portraits
to Keira Knightley’s wartime angel of mercy in ‘‘Atonement’’ to
the
white-suited vixens in recent videos for Duran
Duran
and Good Charlotte
— Florence Nightingale and friends are having a moment. Not
since
Catherine Barkley, the love interest in ‘‘A Farewell to Arms,’’
achieved literary immortality wearing ‘‘what seemed to me to be a
nurse’s uniform’’ has the peaked-capped protector generated so much
cultural traction.
Or so much chic.
Inspired by Prince’s artwork, Marc Jacobs staffed his spring runway for
Louis Vuitton with sexy health providers (see article, left). But if
Jacobs was hoping to
add Fashion Nurse to Prince’s roster of types — Debutante Nurse, Island
Nurse, Dude Ranch Nurse and so on — he need only have looked to real
life for a role model: meet Akari Moffat, better known as Ako, the
Blabla Nurse, who ministers to the ‘‘fashion sick.’’
Moffat operates Blablahospital, a cultish clothing
boutique in London,
where her focus is healing. To this petite, 26-year-old Japanese woman,
who greets her ‘‘patients’’ in a nurse’s uniform and does her
‘‘operating’’ in a doctor’s coat, fashion sickness is a serious
condition. It is a state of boredom with one’s clothes and one’s life
that can only be alleviated by dressing like someone, or something, out
of a hospital.
During my recent visit to Blablahospital, a tiny stall in Camden
Stables Market, Moffat said her idea of curative clothing dates to her
childhood, when accidents landed her in the hospital and left her with
a fondness for all things medical. Later, as a design student in Tokyo,
she began wearing hospital-inspired garb. In the Japanese context,
these outfits had an obvious kinship with the get-ups beloved by the
fashion-forward youth of Tokyo’s Harajuku district — and associated in
this country with Gwen Stefani. (Stefani’s backup dancers, the Harajuku
Girls, have also been known to dress as nurses.)
Yet even among her
outrageous peers, her medical ensembles, worn with striped Raggedy Ann
stockings, always stood out. ‘‘When I dressed as a nurse,’’ she
recounted with a humor so dry it may not have been humor at all,
‘‘everybody became sick in front of me, saying, ‘Help me, nurse!’ ’’
And so the Blabla Nurse was born, with Moffat bringing her
off-the-chart style to one and all, ‘‘from 8-year-olds to 80-year-old
grandmums.’’ In truth, I can’t quite picture kiddies or grannies
adopting the Blabla look, best described as Rei Kawakubo and Sid
Vicious Getting Naughty in the Sick Ward.
Her patients are mostly punk:
young people whose presumed fashion malaise does not mean fashion
timidity. In her shop, I was the only customer whose face hadn’t been
pierced and whose hair wasn’t a riot of spikes and horns. Typical was
the hedgehog-headed teenager who stopped to browse the Injury Ties.
Seeing that the tag on the tie read ‘‘Cure Level: Slight Sickness,’’ I
asked what ailed him. ‘‘I don’t have an injury!’’ he bellowed. ‘‘I’m
just mad!’’
To such sick puppies, Blablahospital offers a list of treatments as
long as a waiting-room line: deconstructed nurses’ caps emblazoned with
a red cross; Arm Plasters (casts) appliquéd with
‘‘blood’’-stained
bandages; and the aforementioned Injury Ties, which, like the Blabla
Injury T-Shirts and Injury Jackets, are adorned with felt crosses,
tattered pieces of gauze and/or jagged EKG stitching in contrasting
thread. With very few exceptions, the Blabla Nurse’s color palette is
restricted to ‘‘Cleanliness Hospital White, Bloody Red and Always
Mysterious Black.’’
But if there’s anything mysterious about the Blabla enterprise, it is
less the tricolor garments than the mechanisms by which they promote
good health. Her pricey prescriptions are exasperatingly vague. A
sample Blaba citation: ‘‘Knot nurse’s hair with bandages.’’
What?
Well, as Moffat elaborated by e-mail, ‘‘Blabla = blah blah blah. When
you can’t explain and it will be a really long story, you know,
‘blablablabla.’ It means blabla can be anything.’’ That’s probably
true. Suffering from my own brand of fashion ennui, I recently sported
one of Moffat’s casts to a dinner party, where my spirits soared at my
host’s baffled question: ‘‘Why is there a leg warmer on your arm?’’
Enema, comrade? RUSSIA A monument to the enema has been unveiled
at a spa in the southern
Russian city of Zheleznovodsk. The bronze syringe bulb, which weighs
800 pounds and is held by three angels, was unveiled at the Mashuk-Akva
Term spa. The Caucasus Mountains region is known for dozens of spas
where enemas with water from mineral springs are routinely administered
to treat digestive and other complaints and issues.
A representative of the spa said the monument cost
$42,000 and was
installed in a square in front of his spa. A banner declaring: “Let’s
beat constipation and sloppiness with enemas”, an allusion to a line
from “The Twelve Chairs,” a famous Soviet film comedy, was posted on
one of the spa’s walls.
Sculptor Svetlana Avakina said she designed the
5-foot-high monument
with “irony and humor”. She added that she modeled the angels on those
in works by Italian Renaissance painter Alessandro Botticelli.
Foot Fetishists... beware of ankles! TEXAS "Everyone knows what an ankle
is," said an official of the association of Texas medical doctors. Not
so, said a lawyer representing Texas podiatrists: "You don't have an
ankle. The foot actually includes the ankle." A state appeals court in
March sided with the medical doctors, but the podiatrists say it's not
over yet and that they may continue to treat ankles even though they
are licensed to work only on feet.
A word to
the wise...
PHILIPPINES Officials at
Vicente Sotto
Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City, Philippines, apologized in April
on behalf of at least six doctors and other personnel for laughing
raucously during surgery and making a party video (that was later
uploaded to YouTube) of the operating-room removal of a perfume
canister from the anus of a male patient.
New Enema Equipment!
The JBL
Sit-on Enema Bag... "JBL"
stands for
"Joy, Beauty,
Life" which is exactly what it's original creator, Dr.
Charles Tyrell believed it would bring when he
developed it back in the
1900's.
Charles A.
Tyrell, born in Britain, came
to the
United States in 1880. After six years in New York, he suffered an
attack of a rare ‘paralysis’ which
resulted in his admission to Bellevue Hospital where his condition
worsened.
He was then moved to St. Vincent’s Hospital where
he was, as he stated,
“given up for dead”. While ‘dying’ there he read a treatise by a Dr.
Wilford Hall extolling the virtues of the enema for treating virtually
anything that might ail one. Tyrell apparently had the tube up his
rear in a heartbeat and soon recovered his health.A
few years and many enemas later, Tyrell founded Tyrell Hygienic
Institute, a company in New York that manufactured and sold enema
products for home use. In 1894 he published a book titled The
Royal Road to Health.
We sell this
newer
version of Dr. Tyrell original design. His unique
enema bag works when one sits upon it,
forcing the fluid to shoot through the nozzle screwed into place in the
center of
the curved shaped bag. It holds about 6.5 quarts, and comes with an
adjustable "butt plug style" straight-up shooting nozzle. The
adjustable arm (handle) on the nozzle easily controls flow with a twist!